Saturday, January 31, 2015

Amélie Frank

This Many Ways to Please the New Critics

IOn the early July sidewalk the only thing, a dead thingits unmoving eye, sentinel to the end.

IIYou’d never know this canaryhad been born yellowher job to hop aboutwhile hardworking men give her the vaporsto fall into the Delphic swoonto chirp, unbelieved, unheededor worse, misunderstood.

IIIThe psychopomp can tell you a few things about being misunderstood. He can arrive bearing a lottery ticket of great joy,and he’ll still have to outfly the scattershotof the superstitious.

IVAuspicious is the glowing fruit what becomes of the knowledgethat slides down the gulletof Morpheus’ herald?Creature and contemplation,do they become one?

V There is no beautyin innuendos that do not exist,in inflections that never crossed my mindbefore, during, or after.

VIInnocence finds the cause of recurring winter indecipherable.Beauty in snow, always. It’s the barbaric cold innocence does not understand.

VIIThin men go to their gravesmaking thin women along the way. Whistle-clean kisses. A bullet dodged.

VIIIEverything that I know about a poemand all the nobility and love put therein come to nothing if a reader commits the Intentional Fallacy.For my part, I am not supposed to considerthe affect of a reader’s random paranoiaunless the reader tries to kill me.

Conversational Amélie

I – The Sky

for Michael Paul

Answer to today’s mystery: because thesky across which I fly is made of pain.It is a terrible sky. We all inhale and exhaleher every moment of every day. She isbenevolent to all, but not to me.

Eventually, the sky wants to kill me. She will do it slowly with great patienceand in gentle increments, for she is well practiced in indifference.

When I was five, she taught the worldnot to hear me. She refracts the lightaway from me so that none will see who I am, what I am.

As I teach you the vocabulary and syntaxof my world, please hear me. Please see me,for I am more than what the light thatthat spills from the sky allows you to see.

You are a particle. I am a wave.See me shimmer. See me robbed of myplumage. See me ford on after both ofmy wings have been snapped in two. Everyone on earth can see me walk, but a rare few have noticed the wingsthat hang limp, gone to atrophyat my sides. Ask me, who snappedthese wings? I’ll answer that you’ve startled me. I didn’t know anyone could see that I have them.

Who snapped my wings? Breathe in. Breathe out. Did you feel her loveyour lungs with air? There. You have your answer.

Los Angeles native Amélie Frank is the author of five poetry collections, and her work has appeared in print and on-line in numerous local and national publications. She founded The Sacred Beverage Press with poet Matthew Niblock and has served as a judge for poetry and spoken word contests, a director of the Valley Contemporary Poets, a member of the Beyond Baroque Board of Trustees, and coordinated The Big Picture a documentary photograph of the largest group of Southern California poets ever gathered for a single event. She has received the Spirit of Venice Award (2003), served on the Ventura Arts Council (2004), and in 2007 was honored with a certificate of appreciation from the Los Angeles City Council for her work in the Southern California literary arts community. In 2012, the Board of Directors at Beyond Baroque voted unanimously to honor her the Distinguished Service Award.